THE GREEN FELT JUNGLE

KIRKUS REVIEW

Las Vegas, an oasis of anything goes in a desert of no gambling laws for the rest of the country, is revealed as the Mafia & Associates' own little mirage. Officially protected and respectable by Chamber of Commerce recognition, the front men are seldom the real owners of the big name gaming houses. An appendix of shareholders and the percentages held by each is at the back of the book. These names have also appeared on police blotters and in the crime news. Barry Goldwater's pre-Senate junkets to the tables, Frank Sinatra and Company's forays into the Sands and the serious problems encountered by area bawdy house owners are spread out in unsavory detail. A taped conversation between a lawyer and a client who wishes to turn brothel keeper is a high low-spot. Reid, who won the Pulitzer prize for his news stories exposing a multi-million dollar book-making syndicate in New York joins journalist Demaris to muckrake a city with more documentation and less of the titillating indignation that marked the Mortimer/Lait books. Ammunition for the argument which holds that gambling and the inevitable company it keeps cannot be morality.

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